The CATIE Blog is a unique opportunity for individuals to express a wide latitude of opinion on a range of issues. The views expressed in the blog are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or opinions of CATIE nor the views of its funders.

Tag: Youth

Taking Action II is a community-based action research project about building and supporting Indigenous youth leadership in the HIV/AIDS movement. We are a group of Indigenous youth leaders, Indigenous community-based organizations and university-based researchers. We wanted to create awareness around HIV, sexual health, and decolonization in First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities across Turtle Island (also known as Canada).

In Taking Action I, we worked with over 100 youth in six Indigenous communities across Canada to make art about the links between HIV and colonization. We did this as a way of broadening the conversations about HIV – to move away from the individual shame-and-blame discourse. We wanted to help communities understand and respond back to all the structural factors that have conspired to make them vulnerable to HIV: racism, poverty, land theft, residential schools, loss of language/culture, epidemics of addiction, the Sixties Scoop (the practice of taking Indigenous children and placing them in foster homes beginning in the 1960s) and ongoing child welfare involvement, incarceration, etc. Youth created a lot of amazing art that took up these themes. They loved our workshops and asked for more opportunities to get together with youth from other communities.

The CATIE Blog is a unique opportunity for individuals to express a wide latitude of opinion on a range of issues. The views expressed in the blog are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or opinions of CATIE nor the views of its funders.